The day we moved in, the front entryway had three broken windows. Two were glass (one with duct tape keeping it together) and one had a plexiglass replacement “pane” in it.

Since the insurance companies aren’t fond of broken windows, we’ve been working on replacing them. We wanted to keep it authentic, so we went the route of replacing the glass. Since the weather has been awful, working on any outdoor project hasn’t topped our favorites list.

Here’s what we did:

1. Called our local glass company with precise measurements. Measure the sash at different points if it’s an old house; our side panels were not exactly rectangular (surprise, surprise). We made a cardboard template for the door pane, which has an arched top. Make sure you’ve got an 1/8″ clearance all the way around.

2. Removed old glazing and trim VERY CAREFULLY. We didn’t do this with the first pane, and learned the hard way that quarter-round has shrunk a bit in the last hundred years (much like 2x4s)

3. Removed all of the glass.

4. Cleaned out all the old putty, caulk, etc. Our glass guy stressed that a clean surface is important.

5. Fit the glass into the window

6. Tapped the trim back on and wood puttied gaps and holes. For the front door, we will be applying a putty compound because there was no trim holding it in.

7. Paint (we haven’t done this yet, tsk tsk)

Ta-da!

There’s other things we could have done, such as use glazier points, but overall I think we did a decent job. The new glass looks great. We used 1/4″ thick safety glass for the door, so hopefully it will withstand a good hard slam.